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THE PENELOPE TEMPTATION
Belinda Cannone
January 2010, 220 pages

“What does feeling like a woman mean today? Popular opinion tends to postulate the existence of a ‘feminine nature’ associated with the ability to bear children. This essay opposes that reductive, regressive concept, and asks us not to undo what previous generations have achieved: to resist the Penelope temptation. For it is only by truly living as a woman and having a generous concept of human beings and all their possibilities that we can have any hope for a movement towards equality.
I put the question of desire at the heart of this book: it’s because we love men and desire them that we look for better ways to live together. I put freedom as a motivating force and a horizon: confronted with claims regarding identity, freedom alone helps us strive to throw off old models and prejudices, so that we can constantly reinvent our lives.
The essay is constructed on three inter-connected strands: personal implication (what distance could I hope to have when discussing a question which is as intimate as it is widespread?); thoughts on (historical) representations of the differences between the sexes, genders and sexuality; and a discussion of a number of recent feminist works. Thirty-six brief chapters explore topics such as women’s brains, insanity, politics, male beauty, not wanting to have children, the possibility of suspending gender, prostitution etc.
A modest book since it is written with the words ‘for now’ in mind: tomorrow has so many surprises in store. An optimistic book because equality has been set in motion, inexorably, if we ourselves don’t slow it down. A committed book because - by hounding out representations that threaten emancipation, and trying to imagine routes to equality - it expounds several profound convictions.”
Belinda Cannone

Belinda Cannone is a novelist and essayist. Her publications include novels: Dernières promenades à Petropolis (Le Seuil, 1990) ; L’Île au nadir (Quai Voltaire, 1992) ; Trois nuits d’un personnage (Stock, 1994) ; Lent Delta (Verticales, 1998) ; L’homme qui jeûne (L’Olivier, 2006) ; Entre les bruits (L’Olivier, 2009) ; and several essays including L’Écriture du désir (Calmann-Lévy, 2000, winner of 2001 Académie française Essay Prize); Le Sentiment d’imposture (Calmann-Lévy, 2005, winner of Société des Gens de Lettres Essay Prize, 2005); and La bêtise s’améliore (Stock, 2007).